Folding up like a cheap suit, Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, ordered the removal of two statues of Christopher Columbus in the middle of the night in Chicago parks in response to mob threats to tear them down and riot another night. This, after weeks of rejecting the idea, and lecturing President Trump on the evils of sending U.S. officers into Chicago to help restore order.

Here's her wokesterly statement:

Later Friday morning, the mayor’s office released a statement saying that she had both statues “temporarily removed ... until further notice.”

“This step is about an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols,” the statement said. “In addition, our public safety resources must be concentrated where they are most needed throughout the city, and particularly in our South and West Side communities.”

It's a cave-in, and a pretty nasty one. The mob can see that easily enough and already says it's not satifsfied. Having gotten Lightfoot to cave so easily on Columbus, it's now raising the cost of its ransom, figuring she'll fold to that, too:

After the news broke, more than 1,000 protesters who were rallying near Lightfoot’s Logan Square home rejoiced. Soon after, an organizer led the crowd in a celebratory chant.

“Thank you for the statue, now defund CPD,” the crowd bellowed.

...and...

"We have a right to freedom of assembly. We have a right to protest. What happened yesterday was a travesty. That's what happens in dictatorships," Aislinn Pulley with Black Lives Matter Chicago said, adding she saw people beaten by police and officers using tear gas.

Amika Tendaji, another member of Black Lives Matter Chicago, said, "We cannot bodycam our way out of this. We cannot do any kind of reforms to get those people to act with humanity. They must be defunded."

State Sen. Robert Peters also called for reform at the news conference.

"We must get police out of our communities and invest in housing, schools, social services, grocery stores," he said. "That is what lifts up our communities."

...and...

A Twitter user tweeted a video of people protesting and said, “Folks are chanting, 'Where’s @LoriLightfoot? Getcho a** up out the house' as more officers pull up.” Another wrote: “She’s taking down the statue, and now we need her to #DefundCPD. Keep pushing!!!” One user stated: “It’s coming down because of the activism that has led to this moment. Indigenous, Black and Brown people have been fighting for so long to see this happen. It’s also a balancing act, the Mayor just accepted Federal Agents from Trump.” 

They know she can be rolled. They must have asked themelves why they demanded seemingly so little. They can ask anything of this blue-city Democrat and they'll get that, too.

And what a coincidence, they knew how to press Lightfoot's panic button, too. The same mobs that sought to tear down her city's landmarks popped in on her residence, a technique that worked very well for the woke mobs over in Seattle:

CHICAGO -- A few hundred people gathered Saturday night near Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Logan Square home to protest the city's handling of a demonstration the night before in Grant Park that saw clashes between police and activists.

The demonstration, which began forming about 7 p.m., eventually grew to include more than 200 people protesting at Fullerton and Kimball avenues in a peaceful, but at times tense, standoff with officers.

Thaaat's how they got what they wanted, same as Seattle's protestors got what they wanted from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, when they targeted her house over the heat she was giving them for the murders going on unchecked in the so-called CHOP zone. According to this Chicago report, she called in almost the entire precinct in her area to protect her property, and too bad about the rest of the beat.

These mayors are running scared, and like desperate drowning men, they're also trying to take down their own would-be rescuer. 

President Trump in fact, offered her city the use of federal officers to restore order. And Lightfoot resisted:

"We don't need federal troops. We don't need unnamed, secret federal agents roaming around the streets of Chicago, taking residents without cause and violating their basic constitutional rights," the mayor said. "I'm glad that the president got the message."

"I'm glad to see that he realized that what he did in Portland was a grave abuse of his presidential power," she added.

Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) July 21, 2020

Such pieties. 

Trump told Fox News's Sean Hannity last night that he had a civil enough conversation with her, but sensed she was actually running scared of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter mob.  

That mob was calling the shots because it knew she would never be seen cooperating with President Trump. She was a jellyfish to them, not a vertabrate, and treated accordingly.

This paints an ugly picture. Apparently these blue-city mayors, with Lightfoot being the latest among them, would rather see their cities razed and anarchy take over than be caught dead cooperating with President Trump. If they take troops at all, it's with extreme reluctance and spin. This is an unprecedented situation, mayors who will let their cities be trashed by mobs and themelves be shaken down with ever bigger ransom demands and all they can do is claim that President Trump is the bad guy.

Word is out now, and the leftist mob will everywhere now be making bigger, crazier, more absurd demands ... and getting what they want. This won't end well.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Twitter screen shot and Pixabay public domain image.